The US and Russia are trading shots after Moscow sent 2 bombers to visit the US's biggest foe in the hemisphere

Their arrival comes amid increased tensions between the
US and Russia and a US-led pressure campaign on
Venezuela.

Russia remains one of Venezuela's most important
allies, but there are limits to its support.

Two Russian Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers arrived in
Venezuela on Monday, and their presence has already prompted
dueling statements from Washington and Moscow.

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The bombers landed at Maiquetia
Airport outside Caracas after a 6,200-mile flight, the Russian
Defense Ministry said. They were accompanied by an An-124
military transport plane and an Il-62 long-range aircraft.

The Defense Ministry said the journey took the bombers through the
Arctic and Atlantic oceans, but the flight was "in
strict compliance with international rules of the use of
airspace."

Moscow didn't say if the bombers carried weapons, but they
are capable of carrying conventional or nuclear-armed missiles
with a range of 3,400 miles.

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caption

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, center, next to Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, right, at a military parade in La Guaira, Venezuela, May 21, 2016.

source

Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS

Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez has
said the Russian aircraft would conduct joint
flights with Venezuelan planes. Moscow hasn't said
how long this trip would last, but it has already drawn a
response from the US, which views Venezuela as its most
significant foe in the region.

"Russia's government has sent bombers halfway around the
world to Venezuela," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter. "The Russian
and Venezuelan people should see this for what it is: two corrupt
governments squandering public funds, and squelching liberty and
freedom while their people suffer."

The Pentagon also criticized the deployment, contrasting it
with the US dispatching the hospital ship USNS Mercy, which
treated tens of thousands of patients, many of them Venezuelans,
on a tour of South America this
year.

"As the Venezuelan government seeks Russian warplanes, the United
States works alongside regional partners and international
organizations to provide humanitarian aid to Venezuelans fleeing
their crisis-racked nation," Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon
said Monday. "We maintain our
unwavering commitment to humanity."

caption

Colombian and Venezuelan patients rest after surgery in the hospital ship USNS Comfort on November 27, 2018.

source

Fernando Vergara/Associated Press

The Kremlin rebuked Pompeo, with Russian presidential spokesman
Dmitry Peskov telling reporters that Pompeo's
comments were "rather undiplomatic" and that Moscow
"consider[s] this statement to be totally
inappropriate."

He also chided the US for labeling the deployment as a
waste of money. "It is not appropriate for a country half of
whose defense expenditure would be enough to feed all of Africa's
people to make such statements," Peskov said.

Russia's Foreign Ministry also joined the fray. In a
statement released Tuesday, the ministry said it
acknowledged that "tweets" did not "bind anyone to anything in
the US in general."

"However in this situation an official is involved, so this
disregard of the rules of diplomatic ethics cannot be seen as a
statement 'to dismiss,'" the ministry added. "What the secretary
of state said is inadmissible, not to mention that it is
absolutely unprofessional."

Good friends, but not best friends

Tu-160 bombers last visited in Venezuela in 2013 and 2008,
the latter trip coming during heightened tensions over Russia's
war with Georgia. Tensions between Washington and Moscow are
again heightened, amid Russia's intervention in Ukraine and
meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, but Moscow's ties
to Caracas are longstanding.

"In the Chávez era, Russia was a major arms supplier to
Venezuela, and Russia's state-owned oil company, Rosneft, remains
a major player in Venezuela's collapsing oil sector," Benjamin
Gedan, former South America director on the National Security
Council and a fellow at The Wilson Center, said in an email.

"In recent years, as once prosperous Venezuela became an
international panhandler, Russia renegotiated loans to postpone
sovereign default," Gedan added.

Russia remains one of the most important international
allies for the increasingly isolated regime of Venezuelan
President Nicolas Maduro, Gedan said, but that support is
not as robust as it may
appear.

Russia's own oil industry has faced headwinds, and its
economy has been strained by sanctions imposed by the US and
European Union after its 2014 annexation of Crimea. While Russian
President Vladimir Putin remains broadly popular, backlash to a government plan
to raise pension ages has dented his standing.

"Russia's generosity is motivated in part by its desire to
prop up a Latin American regime that is hostile to US interests,"
Gedan said. "That said, Moscow does not have the wherewithal to
bail out Venezuela. Given the impacts of sanctions and relatively
low oil prices, Russian support for Venezuela these days mostly
involves purchases of oil assets priced to sell by the desperate
Venezuelan government."

Maduro returned from a three-day visit to Russia last week
touting $6 billion in
investments, including a $5 billion pledge for joint oil ventures
and a Russian agreement to send 600,000 metric tons of wheat to
Venezuela in 2019.

But officials in Russia questioned those deals, with one Rosneft
official telling the Financial Times that the amount of new oil
investments mentioned by Maduro sounded "suspiciously close" to
the amount of the existing agreement.